


Cold Water & Vinegar

by intentioncraft



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Back to School, Children, Fluff, M/M, Married Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 12:59:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4626174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intentioncraft/pseuds/intentioncraft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basically, Dean and Benny have a five year old daughter. She can be a handful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Water & Vinegar

**Author's Note:**

> there was a dirty!denny prompt on tumblr "end of summer/back to school" and well they do get dirty.

Dean had misgivings about naming their daughter after Benny’s first spouse, but they were each allowed to choose one name, and a reasonably long enough time had passed between then and now that it didn’t feel too macabre to make it her second name. And then, as soon as Mary Andrea’s soft blonde hair darkened to a flaming red, matching the personality she’d been cultivating over the past few years, Dean’s hesitations evaporated and he was more than happy to admit that she was definitely not much of a  _Mary_ .

To Benny’s displeasure.

“She’s picking up your attitude,” he complains to Dean once the lights are out and they’ve both climbed into bed near the end of August.

“What’s that s’posed to mean?”

Andy’s daycare called halfway through Wednesday of last week to warn them both of an _incident_. Non-emergency, but startling nonetheless. Benny picked her up to find Andy in the time-out chair with her hair cut into messy, uneven hanks, dark blue and purple streaks in some spots. The daycare workers assured Benny that the markers she used were non-toxic and washable but Dean’s attempts to rescue Andy’s longer hair that night proved pointless. He had to cut it so short that he couldn’t even braid it anymore and upon hearing _that_ news, Andy threw a fit. Because braids make her feel like a warrior princess.

“She’s like to experiment, just play around with things,” Dean grumbles at Benny in the dark. Just, sometimes Andy’s playtime is messy.    

Benny hums deliberately and puts his cold feet over Dean’s ankles, “I’m just saying. If she doesn’t fit in at school when she starts up in a couple weeks...you know how it goes. We’ll probably get a call. People talk. Word gets around.”

They were both invited to PTA meetings at the elementary school the year before by their neighbour and family friend, Lisa, whose son Ben is just a year older than Andy. Two of three dads in a sea of moms putting together fundraisers and functions and debating _grade school politics._  Dean wonders when the hell they both turned so suburban, but it was Benny who walked in on him leaning over the kitchen table one night last May agonizing over what colour frosting he wants on the cupcakes for the kindergarten graduation. Plates or napkins? Punch or juice? Haunting questions. Dean was insufferable for that month.

“So what? They can talk. I’ll set ‘em straight,” Dean says, and immediately regrets the fighting spark in his tone. Neighbourhood and daycare gossip, that’s one thing. But schools are public. They’re part of a system. What Dean’s been afraid of since he and Benny adopted Andy just a few days after she was born, although he knew it was inevitable, was her becoming a part of a system. Not like he was, because that won’t happen, but any system where someone with a license or a badge will look down at his baby girl and categorize her, write up a file, check off some boxes and name either one of her parents a bad influence, incompetent, unfit.

Growing up in the foster system, it means something different to him to be scrutinized. Even for little things like a clumsy, disaster-prone five year old.

“Nicely, I mean.”

Benny laughs softly.

“And _that’s_ what I mean about attitude,” he rolls onto his side and slings his arm around Dean’s waist to pull him closer into the cool wall of his body. He still smells fresh from the shower after Andy dumped her entire plate of spaghetti on him at dinner, even after Dean warned him not to try balancing her on his lap at the table.

“She’s fine. She’s not hurting anybody,” he insists. Benny may not like it, and Dean might be nervous as hell about Andy starting school, but what he sees when Andy swipes a roll of toilet paper and makes a skirt out of bathroom tissue isn’t the makings of a problem child. Sure, it was a pain in the ass to clean up because she trailed it all over the house, but for a little fun and dress-up it wasn’t the end of the world. And it made a perfect photo-op to send to Sam, who’s still mostly appalled by the entire child-rearing business despite having one on the way himself.  

And then when Andy puts a dollop of chocolate pudding on little Ryan Humphrey’s seat at lunch time when he’s not looking as payback for pushing her in the coat room, that’s…well…Dean doesn’t know what to call it. But his face still twists into a smile when he remembers how Andy tugged on his jacket at home time so he’d bend down. She whispered in his ear exactly what she’d done and why she’d done it, glowing with accomplishment and proud of her deed. Dean had to try and keep a straight face as Nancy, the wide-eyed daycare worker, walked Dean through Andy’s lunch time misconduct.  

Benny’s reply is muffled by Dean’s skin, his mouth kissing down the side of his husband’s neck because he can’t _not_  when it’s right there, “No, she ain’t, most of the time. I know how you feel about makin’ sure she can stand up for herself,” his sigh is ice cold on the wet spot he just made on Dean’s shoulder, “And I wouldn’t change her for the world, but I still think we have to sit her down before school starts, just let her know that there’s going to be lots enough to do there without gettin’ into things and makin’ a mess.”

Dean grunts.

“Think of her poor teachers, sugar,” Benny cajoles, “There’ll be plenty of time for her to be a creative genius with us.” 

“The messes stay here,” Dean says finally.  

“Yup,” Benny says, “Right here, where we can’t miss ‘em.”


End file.
